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scans_daily2012-08-07 11:50 am
nomadicwriter) wrote in scans_daily2012-08-07 11:50 am
Judge Dredd: America II & Cadet
Following on from my "America" post, some scans from the two sequels. "Fading of the Light" was published six years after the original story, and "Cadet" a decade after that. (Since the Dreddverse runs in more or less 1:1 time, the same amount of time passes in-universe between the stories.) 12 pages of scans beneath the cut.
Warnings: References to sexual assault and a euthanasia plotline.
America II: The Fading of the Light
"Fading of the Light" was published in Megazines 3.20 to 3.25. Six years have passed since the events of "America", and Bennett's starting to suffer bad side effects from his full body transplant. (Note that despite adopting a female body, Bennett still identifies as male, and the text and characters treat him as such.)
Bennett is approached by America's Total War allies, who know he's dying and want him to make a suicide attack at an awards ceremony. He turns them down, but still ends up under surveillance from the Judges. When an ill and confused Bennett is later sexually assaulted after a hospital visit, he realises that the Judges were observing but didn't intervene, and it drives him to agree to Total War's plan.
Dredd punishes the Judge who was on surveillance duty when he finds out what happened. (A similar device to the lone Judge shooting against orders in "America", allowing Dredd to keep a fraction more sympathy while underscoring the fact that not all Judges are like him.)
Bennett regrets his decision immediately and goes to the Judges, but Total War kidnap his daughter to force his cooperation. The Judges race to find her as the awards ceremony begins.
Degenerating fast, Bennett collapses on the way up to collect his award. When they realise their plan has failed Total War's operatives open fire and create a bloodbath - but Bennett's determination has bought the Judges enough time, and they manage to rescue his daughter before Total War can harm her.
Bennett is briefly reunited with his daughter, and then goes on to the Euthanasium, accompanied right to the very end by his faithful robot Robert.
Young Ami Beeny, still in the custody of the Judges, receives a letter explaining her father's decisions.
Cadet
America Beeny returns ten years later in a third story, "Cadet", running from Megazines 250-252. Now fifteen, she's reached a point in her Judge training where she gets to run her own assisted investigation. For her topic, she's chosen the events surrounding her parents' deaths, believing that the man the Judges arrested as the Total War ringleader had someone else behind him.
Dredd wants to know why Beeny requested him as her co-investigator.
Beeny reveals that she no longer blames Dredd for his part in her mother's death.
She does, however, indulge in some possibly deliberate subtle torture by making Dredd sit around and do paperwork. It pays off when Dredd finds a potential lead, though it seems at first to come to a dead end. In the process of the investigation Beeny impresses him with her capabilities.
Beeny revisits her father's old house for the first time since she joined the Judges. Rereading the letter he left for her, she realises it must have been Robert the house robot who actually wrote it, since Bennett was too ill. She also discovers her father had his former male body stuffed and fitted with a singing voicebox after the body transplant, and that helps her to twig that one of their suspects has been fooling the lie detectors with a similar voicebox. But the bad guys have already followed her home; they destroy Robert, but Bennett's reanimated body provides a life-saving distration.
And so ends the America trilogy, though it's not the last we see of Cadet Beeny.
Next up: Beeny's part in the Tour of Duty saga.
Warnings: References to sexual assault and a euthanasia plotline.
America II: The Fading of the Light
"Fading of the Light" was published in Megazines 3.20 to 3.25. Six years have passed since the events of "America", and Bennett's starting to suffer bad side effects from his full body transplant. (Note that despite adopting a female body, Bennett still identifies as male, and the text and characters treat him as such.)
Bennett is approached by America's Total War allies, who know he's dying and want him to make a suicide attack at an awards ceremony. He turns them down, but still ends up under surveillance from the Judges. When an ill and confused Bennett is later sexually assaulted after a hospital visit, he realises that the Judges were observing but didn't intervene, and it drives him to agree to Total War's plan.
Dredd punishes the Judge who was on surveillance duty when he finds out what happened. (A similar device to the lone Judge shooting against orders in "America", allowing Dredd to keep a fraction more sympathy while underscoring the fact that not all Judges are like him.)
Bennett regrets his decision immediately and goes to the Judges, but Total War kidnap his daughter to force his cooperation. The Judges race to find her as the awards ceremony begins.
Degenerating fast, Bennett collapses on the way up to collect his award. When they realise their plan has failed Total War's operatives open fire and create a bloodbath - but Bennett's determination has bought the Judges enough time, and they manage to rescue his daughter before Total War can harm her.
Bennett is briefly reunited with his daughter, and then goes on to the Euthanasium, accompanied right to the very end by his faithful robot Robert.
Young Ami Beeny, still in the custody of the Judges, receives a letter explaining her father's decisions.
Cadet
America Beeny returns ten years later in a third story, "Cadet", running from Megazines 250-252. Now fifteen, she's reached a point in her Judge training where she gets to run her own assisted investigation. For her topic, she's chosen the events surrounding her parents' deaths, believing that the man the Judges arrested as the Total War ringleader had someone else behind him.
Dredd wants to know why Beeny requested him as her co-investigator.
Beeny reveals that she no longer blames Dredd for his part in her mother's death.
She does, however, indulge in some possibly deliberate subtle torture by making Dredd sit around and do paperwork. It pays off when Dredd finds a potential lead, though it seems at first to come to a dead end. In the process of the investigation Beeny impresses him with her capabilities.
Beeny revisits her father's old house for the first time since she joined the Judges. Rereading the letter he left for her, she realises it must have been Robert the house robot who actually wrote it, since Bennett was too ill. She also discovers her father had his former male body stuffed and fitted with a singing voicebox after the body transplant, and that helps her to twig that one of their suspects has been fooling the lie detectors with a similar voicebox. But the bad guys have already followed her home; they destroy Robert, but Bennett's reanimated body provides a life-saving distration.
And so ends the America trilogy, though it's not the last we see of Cadet Beeny.
Next up: Beeny's part in the Tour of Duty saga.
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That's why I've been making this series of posts, trying to highlight the stuff that impresses me most, because while everybody loves that "Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" panel, there's really such a lot more to it than just Dredd being a badass.
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For older stories, The Pit is one of my favourites (I posted a little bit from that here). And if you want to go all the way back to the black and white stuff from the 80s, Case Files 5 is a particularly good one. (The earlier case files are fun, but a bit up and down where they were still trying to settle on a tone for the series.)
To be honest, you can't really go wrong picking up anything that was written by John Wagner. The quality level is very high all round as long as you avoid the Ennis, Millar and Morrison stuff from the 90s.
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Much of his run on the title's just sort of forgettable and a bit flat, but I can't think of anything that really stands out as great to balance out the bad stuff.
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